A colleague of mine (thanks Carole!) remarked the other day how I should make a T-shirt with a translation guide that roughly equates what and engineer says with what they mean and/or what one can expect out of the next series of events. I thought this was a great idea, and came up with not one, but two T-shirts, which I present here for your amusement.
A brief note to any engineers who may be reading this: We love you guys. Really, we do. The way you think is part of what makes you great at your jobs. It also happens to be a source of endless amusement (and sometimes, frustration) on the part of non-engineers. Please take this in the spirit it was meant in and do not show up at my office with an Uzi. Kthxbai.
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What the Engineer says
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What you should think
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“This should be working”
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Oh shit…
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“I’ve never seen that before…”
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Strap in, you are in for a wild ride.
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“That’s Interesting…”
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Something is terribly, terribly wrong.
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| “I’ll be right back…” |
You may never see them again.
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“Can you keep that window up?”
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See “That’s Interesting…” | |
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“I’ll be right back, but can you keep that window up?”
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Pack up and go home, you are done for the day.
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“Oh yea, that’s really straightforward”
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1000 lines of code, incoming!
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“We can get that out in a few hours”
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Multiply any time estimate by 12
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What the Engineer says
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What the Engineer means
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“You appear to be the only one having the problem…”
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You are an idiot.
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“The build is broken”
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You are the idiot that checked in bad code.
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“That’s got to be it!”
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I’m completely out of ideas, and if this doesn’t work, you’re screwed.
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“I’m unable to reproduce this on my end…”
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You are most likely an idiot
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“But I don’t understand why it’s doing that…”
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I’ve fixed the problem, but it’s shiny and I want to play with it some more.
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